A combination of moves has nothing to do with the opponent. It's doing certain actions and combining them (aka combo) into a connected series.

By that definition they have 100% do deal with the player and not the target because it's the player and not the target doing those things.

As far as people saying that combo points are the reaction of dealing damage to an opponent and thus weakening them so that when we do a "finisher" it hits harder than a standard attack. Well that's an ok statement except that that exists in the game but rather than a consequence of taking a beat down and then being finished off it's the opening move of any sub rogue aka: Find Weakness.

Also as other have stated more of our finishers don't make sense under that model because if a mod dies why does my finisher of crimson tempest affect other targets who have nothing to deal with the one I was attacking? Or SnD or Recoup? Because the base understanding of a combo is that it's the player whose doing them not the target.

If it's still hard for people to understand:

The way the rogue fights is through a combination of attacks ending with a finishing move that finishes their combination.

With cp on the target under the current system it'd be more akin to fighting your opponent by putting small grenades on him and then at 5 grenades they all explode because they're on the target.

But how rogues work that doesn't make any sense at all.

As for PvP I don't understand why people are so incredibly scared of rogues. Half the people who have posted on this forum sound like they're pissing their pants at the thought of a rogue buff.

Every example that has been given about why this would break pvp for rogues can already be accomplished. We can already Redirect and/or MfD our cp to a new target. We can already drop a 5 point evis on a target or a 5 point KS or even if we want to be extra ballsy redirect 5 cp to a new target and then MfD a 5 pt evis to them. So apparently by everyone's tears of pain that our 5 point evis openers are apparently going around one shotting everyone and 2 rogue teams are /flexing their rogueness and whipping out the big D (damage duh) and insta gibbing the healer. Oh wait... I forgot... rogues are the worst most unrepresented class in PvP... damn I thought I had the God Mode class for a second.

Also rogues still need a ramp up time. Just because we could have CP on us instead of the target doesn't mean that rogues are going to be walking around with a permanent 5 cp dropping 5 point evis's left and right and perma stunning healers. We still have ramp up time. We still have to build cp up again after a finisher. NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.

The biggest aspect in team games especially 3's which is probably the most competitive pvp environment right now is being able to analyze how the fight is going and to know whether or not to keep tunneling a certain opponent or when an opportunity arises quickly target swap and blow that person up. Currently every class can do this. Even rogues. A sub rogue to burst an opponent down needs to typically have shadow dance up and/or be able to open from stealth getting up their find weakness debuff as well as get garrote (hemo in 5.4) up to get sanguinary veins working. Doing those few moves: stealth -> pre-med -> SnD -> garrote -> ambush/cheap shot -> ambush gives the rogue the 5 points + that they need for the dreaded 5 point evisoneshottinghealers ability. So this is already in the game and yet still rogues are at the bottom.

How is cp on the rogue going to be any different? They still need to line up shadow dance to effectively burst someone down and everyone who isn't a complete ignoramus knows that rogues sustain outside of dance is garbage.

Now for PvE some people think that CP on the target increase the skill cap. How? What makes you more skilled and able to do more with the cp on the target? All it does is make is so that on a fast target swap fight you're actually a worse player and take less skill. Think of Durumu adds or the small adds on horridon. They typically die in a few seconds if you have a half decent guild. So how is killing an add and gaining 2 - 4 cp and then having to start over again a higher skill cap? If anything in a lot of cases cp on the target LOWERS the skill cap of rogues because they can't do shit. Color blind phase of durumu is so damn boring because I just can't do anything. I'm being a team player and not sitting on the boss to make sure that the adds die as fast as possible but it's just crap. There's no extra skill envolved because the adds die so fast that even a redirect wouldn't help.

So. All you holier than thou people who like to spout off current modern day jargon making yourself seem like a trendy guy: give 1 example of how cp on the player rather than the target would lower the skill cap of a rogue? I have yet to see it.

Why is it that everyone who is pro cp change has all sorts of well thought out arguments and everyone else is either "don't like it" "homogenization" "same as holy power" "skill cap" or "ruins pvp" yet no one really gives solid legit reasoning? Well aside from the fictional double rogue god mode team who will with a change like this turn into healer slayers who are the masters of CC and can destroy everyone.

So. All you holier than thou people who like to spout off current modern day jargon making yourself seem like a trendy guy: give 1 example of how cp on the player rather than the target would lower the skill cap of a rogue? I have yet to see it.

Why is it that everyone who is pro cp change has all sorts of well thought out arguments and everyone else is either "don't like it" "homogenization" "same as holy power" "skill cap" or "ruins pvp" yet no one really gives solid legit reasoning? Well aside from the fictional double rogue god mode team who will with a change like this turn into healer slayers who are the masters of CC and can destroy everyone.

Horridon is probably the best boss fight to explain to you why a rogue who manages cps will shine while others will not.

As for "well thought out arguments", read nextormento's posts. They pretty much sum up a lot of the sentiments. Whether or not you are willing to accept his arguments is another thing entirely.

Horridon is probably the best boss fight to explain to you why a rogue who manages cps will shine while others will not.

As for "well thought out arguments", read nextormento's posts. They pretty much sum up a lot of the sentiments. Whether or not you are willing to accept his arguments is another thing entirely.

On horridon small adds die way too fast. Mid - higher adds personally I mut -> rupture -> mfd envenom and then maybe get enough muts in for another envenom. Even with redirect I don't see how a person can "shine" on horridon.

Rogues have a long ramp up time each time a mob dies. It takes awhile to build up 5 cp and after an initial opening on a mob I'm typically out of energy and then have to wait for it to build up to do stuff. Aside from trying to squeeze in a few more dps here and there on adds add dps is complete dog shit and the majority comes from burning the boss with a high damage modifier on it.

And the worse thing is just that the feel of the fight sucks. There's no rhythm. There's no extra skill. It's just hitting a stupid add and watching it die shortly after. Can't ever get going like you do when you're on a boss.

More over it's not fun at all. I don't think there's a non-masochistic rogue out there who loves add duty on any boss fight. And it's not just the lower dps it's just the fact that the game play on adds is really bad.

As far as "feel" of the fight that is subjective but there is a good rhythm between rupture cleaving, focus damage on "main" adds and then keeping rupture on Horridon on downtime. There is a point where there is too much energy other than dump FoK + Envenom while keeping ruptures up. As far as add duty, fights require them you might as well get used to them. Not everyone gets the chance to do the fun jobs. Horridon is a fight that is only hard when you have too many "too good for adds" raiders.

EDIT: Actually looking through the log, having 16 Bad Juju Procs with multiple double procs and overlaps with cds is overkill.

In the log you link, 75% of the rogue's damage is Horridon, and the lock right below him has 59% of his damage on Horridon. That's a hell of a lot more add damage coming from the lock. It is clear that Horridon is nowhere near hard for this group. For instance, the ability to multidot Horridon only happens when you have enough damage to keep the adds under control- I saw our group get to this point (and my damage went substantially up), and then lose it at the end of the tier (lost geared people).

My point by subtracting out the Horridon damage is, without Horridon having a ludicrous damage boost, people would not be so eager to multidot him. Because "the map is not the territory" and "recount is not the fight". People even KNOW this, and don't behave that way on progression.

If you take the damage multiplier guy out of the fight (and eliminate the single target phase), you instead see that the rogue has a lot less options than many other classes. This is likely intended, of course, but the fact is, this is a great argument for CPs on the rogue, for at least ONE spec. While a good rogue can get multitarget damage up there, classes not restricted by combo points can often do better- and often that multitarget damage relies on mechanics not all rogue specs have. Where, for instance, is subtlety on Horridon? Where for that matter is combat? You might expect blade flurry might make combat worth using, but in fact, it is nowhere close (as we predicted at the announcement of the blade flurry nerf).

So all this demonstrates is that mutilate, a multidot spec, does ok on a multidot fight, while the other rogue specs are absolutely trashcan, in part because of their combo points. But what if combat had combo points on the rogue? Pretty clearly, combat would do better on those fights than it does now. Right now being good at combat, and at combo points, nets you very little delta versus a rogue who is not great at those, and in all cases you would be better off as mutilate (and when you forget about mutilate's exceptional single target damage, which greatly distorts the meters on a quad damage boss fight, this becomes a much larger delta).

If combo points were on the player you could kill 5 rabbits and then unleash a mighty 5 combo point attack right from the beginning of a pvp battle. That's 1 reason.

I can use Marked for Death and unleash a 5 CP attack right now, ofcource opening from stealth with a Kidney shot, and put in a Mutilate on that, and you´re already at 4 CPs anyway.
I can sit in stealth as Sub and let Honor Among Thieves build up on a target aswell.
But we´ve gone over this so many times now..

You´d probably also have a timed decay on the CPs, monks cant run around fully cocked for very long for example.

I can use Marked for Death and unleash a 5 CP attack right now, ofcource opening from stealth with a Kidney shot, and put in a Mutilate on that, and you´re already at 4 CPs anyway.
I can sit in stealth as Sub and let Honor Among Thieves build up on a target aswell.
But we´ve gone over this so many times now..

You´d probably also have a timed decay on the CPs, monks cant run around fully cocked for very long for example.

I think that's the assumption that would happen since every resource building class eventually looses it. Warriors/monks/paladins go down to 0. Affliction gets to keep theirs cause they're special but demo looses what half of there? I haven't played my lock demo in awhile I forget. Destruction can start off with 1 but it takes so long for them to build embers anyways but all built resources eventually fade away so even if a rogue in a BG built up 5 CP they'd typically lose that if they ever dropped out of combat.

In arena we can't game the system by stocking up CP before hand so in arena we'd still start off with 0 and still have to build them up somewhere.

He's a question: on a horridon type fight with lots of adds if you were given the option to either have MfD or CP on the player which would you take? Personally hands down I would take MfD since that's the only ability that actually generates CP and CP on the rogue would just be a QoL issue for me.

How do other rogues feel? If cp on the player is such an insane buff I'd assume that most people would chose that but I personally figure that MfD is just so much stronger kinda proving that cp on the player isn't as strong/game breaking as people are making it out to be.

He's a question: on a horridon type fight with lots of adds if you were given the option to either have MfD or CP on the player which would you take? Personally hands down I would take MfD since that's the only ability that actually generates CP and CP on the rogue would just be a QoL issue for me.

How do other rogues feel? If cp on the player is such an insane buff I'd assume that most people would chose that but I personally figure that MfD is just so much stronger kinda proving that cp on the player isn't as strong/game breaking as people are making it out to be.

MfD is stronger then just moving the CPs´to the rogue.
We had Versatility (Redirect without CD) and for a fight like Horridon, that is pretty much CP on rogue + 1 GCD button push on switching, you never have to loose a single CP here if you just push that button.
And Versatility was so underutilized compared to ST and Anticipation that it was taken out and replaced with MfD.

With our current fairly long redirect, messing up and loosing a few CPs on a few of the mobs VS creating 5 free instant CPs on every new mob you target (presuming you actually kill the previous one you used MfD on), seems way way stronger then even the old Versatility, where the CPs you´d avoid loosing would be much fewer. (you´re not going to loose 5 CPs per mob you´re killing)

Besides.. how much is 5 CPs worth anyway?
So much of our damage is passive now, alteast for Assassination, the envenom buff uptime from putting 5 CPs and push a envenom on every mob is probably worth more then the actual envenom hit, in poison application(could be way off here).
5 CP rupture is probably a waste on most of these adds. (and multi dotting with 2-4 CP ruptures doesnt require much use of redirect)
But just sticking to your target is where the meat of it is it seems, in the log posted above Envenom´s direct damage makes up 10.9% of the damage.Melee + Deadly Poison makes up about 50% of the damage, with Venomous Wounds + Rupture adding another 13% (10.6% + 2.4%) passive damage.
Sure, while Rupture and Envenom´s direct damage is fairly small, they do add to the passive damage quite a bit, so it would require some untangling to figure out how much of the passive DP damage is boosted by the envenom buff and all that. (15% of the 22.6% that came from the "instant poison" component of DP?)

I would say that it all boils to Assassination having an unexpected AoE rotation (Rupture multidot doesn't seem intended at all for a large-scale AoE battle), Combat having Blade Flurry nerfed and replaced with a band-aid AoE; and the notion that giving something, ANYTHING to Subtely could "break" pvp and make it overpowered. Rogue AoE is a clusterfuck of abilities without purpose.

I know its not huge input from me but i so hope that combo points stay on the target and not the player, with redirect swapping is just as easyamd couldnt we just use MFD is we had to swap often?

To an extent, yes. For groups working on Horridon who had a terrible comp (had a hard time downing adds, easy time killing Horridon before enrage), MfD was a given. Increased damage on add trumped all - but this is primarily only the case for assassination, which was the go-to spec, and doesn't account for such bugs as MfD's cooldown not resetting if the mob you use MfD on dying quickly (0-2s) after use. Redirect can help as well, but truly, it's just a hassle, since if you don't need redirect more often than it has a CD for, and you're not losing DPS to use it... why do we need a button to do it with?

That said, this only really applies to assassination. If you played Combat for Horridon, your options would be to laugh at how bad your DPS is on adds (targeting small ones), or just using flurry off larger adds. Having a spec with fewer open GCDs to redirect, which relies on CP to reset its CDs, is a real kick in the pants. Mentioning sub in regards to a CP discussion on Horridon would make no sense - it's just not viable on that encounter. If it lines up next tier it might be worth looking at.

couldn't have said it myself better, the game is already being changed toward having every classes doing the same things the same way... we don't need this

Oh my god, just because it's similar does not mean it's homogenization. The class still plays vastly differently to others as a whole.

You'd have a point if all of a sudden they made finishers cost 1-3 combo points but never more, and eviscerate require 3, but they're not.

It's a case of practicality. Just like it was super impractical for not all melee to have a short cd interrupt when it's incredibly important to have one in all aspects of the game, so they gave it to every melee. Having combo points stick to target is impractical. That's why when they made new similar resources, they are stored on player, because it would be retarded to play a pally or monk, especially healer, if you had to use some redirect move.

Because chi and holy power are on you and not the target, they're just plain better and more flexible. Combo points being on the target is outdated and clunky. If you're going to have other classes have a similar system but updated, then rogues should get it too.

Ret paladins: CD based FCFS rotation. They rotate through various abilities building up HP and then spend HP on either templar's verdict or inquisition. Through Art of War and Divine purpose procs their rotation is extremely reactive and can end up being either rather boring and blase or end up chaining templar's verdicts and destroying people. With enough haste and good procs a ret paladin is rarely ever not GCD capped and rarely has a moment of just sitting there. They definitely have a very active rotation which because of all their procs you really never know what's going to happen next.

WW monks: Outside of Fists Of Fury their main finishers cost usually 2 chi or 1. Jab conveniently generates 2 chi to which they can have a back and for jab -> finisher and pretty much they generate finishers faster than any other class. To GCD for a WW monk is relatively easy since they have a really nice way to spend a resource which in turn generates another. As in, Jab generates 2 chi, Rising Sun Kick or Black Out Kick take 2 chi and during your GCD of using chi based attacks you're regening energy to generate more chi. Not to mention Jab also has procs to give free finishers further helping with energy regen. Monks have by far the most fluid of the "CPesq" using specs.

Rogues: Rogues are very linear. With dispatch assassination has a little way to mix things up but really not much changes. Combat and sub both have a buff to keep up with RS/Hemo but besides those and dispatch the general formula simplified is "111112". There really isn't much that changes up. Rogues have the longest time building up finishers even with like combat compared to assassination one gets a rediculous amount of haste and spams SS where as the other has a lower energy regen but they generate more CP per builder but really it's just a very linear system of build cp/wait for energy -> finisher -> repeat til dead.

Out of all three of these commonly compared game plays none of them play similarly and the general game play is not influenced at all by CP on the target or the player.

The biggest factor is that where those other classes can continue with their normal rotation from mob to mob in a fight that has a lot of mobs that need to be burned down is that they can continue on as normal but a rogue just stutter steps through it taking a massive dps loss.

So as far as homogenization is concerned the only homogenization is that rogues will be able to continue their standard game play the way the others do rather than have to stutter through the fight. Their actual game play isn't going to change at all and will just feel better. But on a boss fight that doesn't really require many adds nothing is going to change at all and all three are going to play exactly as they do now.